again with cyanoacrylate. If the fit of the dome to the tank is good, this will be a strong joint. Use care in centering the dome on the tank top reference line and be sure it is equidistant from each tank end. On both cars, the safety ap- pliances go toward the B-end of the car. To hold the tank handrail, I chose to use the fine Precision Scale Company brass stanchions, part No. 32110. I marked the locations for these starting from the pencil line atop the tank as a reference, measuring downward 3.5 scale feet on each side of the tank sur- face, then locating points along this line 5 and 10 scale feet from each end. On the ends I located the vertical cen- ter and made sure the horizontal align- ment matched the tank sides. At the ten intersections thus generated, I
used a scriber to make a starting dim- ple, then drilled No. 73 holes. The Precision Scale Company stan- chions have to be prepared for use. Their openings for the handrail needs to be drilled out to .020″ diameter to accommodate an .019″ handrail. I used a pin vise and carefully moved down one drill number at a time from No. 78. The stanchions are made of soft brass and need to be restrained so they do not bend when the drill bit starts to cut. As mentioned, the handrail is .019″, which scales out to the prototype dimension for this part (1¹/₄″ nominal pipe size, which has an outer diameter of 1.66″). I used brass wire for this and made a single handrail by carefully bending it to the shape of the tank and allowing for the standoff of the stan- chions.
After threading the stanchions onto the wire, I started inserting the stan- chions into the holes beginning with the two end ones. The glue (cyanoacry- late) was allowed to set thoroughly be- fore attaching the side stanchions. When I was satisfied with the align- ment on the sides they were glued in place.
Where the two ends of the handrail came together I used .020″ inside di- ameter stainless steel hypodermic tub- ing (you can purchase this from Small Parts at
www.smallparts.com) to simu- late a pipe union. This method was first described, as far as I know, in Ted Cu- lotta’s “Essential Freight Cars” series in RMC. I tried several ways to cut this tubing, but by far the best is a cut-off
The K&S aluminum tubing used for the domes was ground using abrasive paper wrapped around a spare piece of Plastruct tubing (above). This is a surprisingly fast and accurate method. The de- tail parts on the acid car dome top (below left) include the Preci- sion Scale manway, the frangible-disk safety valve made from a
disk in a motor tool. Once in place it can be glued with cyanoacrylate cement. For the dome walkways on both cars I used the Tichy ones in the tank car detail set, attaching them with styrene cement. The acid car dome walkways were shortened to 7′-0″ feet to fit the length of the black center band. I spray-painted the acid tank light gray using Floquil SP Lettering Gray. When this was thoroughly dry, I masked all but the center band and the tank bottom below the tank cradles, then spray-painted the black. The Becco tank was sprayed silver using Floquil Old Silver. Next, I hand- painted the handrails black on both cars so that any black that got onto the lighter-color body could be touched up prior to lettering.
With the tank bodies essentially com- plete, I glued them to the underframe tank cradles. These provide a large glu- ing surface and make a secure joint. Then I added tank hold-down bands with HO scale 1″×4″ styrene strip threaded into the slots in the Tichy tank cradles and painted silver or gray. The press-in coupler box covers are secure but removable, so I used them when installing Kadee No. 58 couplers. InterMountain AAR trucks received Reboxx wheelsets. The narrow wheel treads are essential for cars like tank cars, which have the wheels visible from above. The last modeling task is the addi- tion of ladders. Many suitable freight car ladders are available. I used the ones in the Tichy tank car detail set.
Precision Scale Company steam packing gland (on the left) and the air valve cover made from styrene rod (on the right). The peroxide car dome top (below right) has an Athearn manway cover atop a short length of brass tubing, a Tichy safety valve on the left, and the valve fitting made from a Precision Scale pop valve on the right.
RAILROAD MODEL CRAFTSMAN
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